“Of course, it’s laughable that God wants Donald back in the White House, but try telling that to Trump’s evangelical base,” writes ROBERT MACKLIN. 

There is a certain mad logic behind Toowoomba’s murder and manslaughter trial of 14 members of the Christian sect who preferred prayer over insulin to treat eight-year-old Elizabeth Struhs’ type 1 diabetes. 

Mad? Yes. But it’s a madness that is practised in its various forms by at least half the nine billion of our fellow Homo sapiens. And while the death of an innocent little girl is heart-rending, she is only one casualty of the lizard brain that still exists at the base of our consciousness.

According to their trial testimony, the 14 – including Elizabeth’s parents and elder brother – sat around her lifeless body for 36 hours singing hymns and praying before calling triple 0. 

Their leader, Brendan Stevens, 62, has called the trial “religious persecution” since “the Bible is filled with Jesus Christ working miracles. Every person who came to Jesus for a healing was healed”.

Well, you can’t argue with that. According to that book of fables and fanatics, Jesus certainly pulled off some neat healings, including the raising of Lazarus from the dead. 

And the 14 Toowoombans really don’t care about the verdict. “We do not wish to fight the charges,” Mr Stevens said. “We are being used; we are happy in that sense to suffer the persecution that has come to us because the Bible says that all that believe in God will be persecuted.”

So it finally revolves around an argument about the power of prayer. And that depends on the existence of a “God” with sufficient interest to monitor the prayers from the billions arriving from at least one universe we know of, let alone choosing between their conflicting requests. It raises an extraordinary vision of a call centre that stretches almost to infinity. 

This is where the mad logic takes us. Christians pray for the cure of people who are ill; but they also pray for people who have recently died. It’s as though their God needs reminding what a nice person she or he was when they were alive; but surely their God would have known that via the monitoring system. 

Or maybe God guided the hand that developed insulin. 

Then there’s America. Oh boy, that’s where the heavenly call centre works overtime. First of all, God is endlessly entreated to “Save” the entire country, but then He’s implored to back every political hack whoever runs for elected office. 

The losers never blame Him. In fact, they happily saddle up for a second or third try; and if they ever actually crack a winning streak like, say, Joe Biden, they’ll stick around until they hear Him call “game over”. 

By then they’re deaf to His pleas and something far more drastic than a heavenly megaphone is required. Even a failed assassination on a rival, one where the bullet just nips his ear, wouldn’t do the trick, even if it made the rival a certainty to be elected in November. Of course, it’s laughable that God wants Donald back in the White House, but try telling that to Trump’s evangelical base.

It took a rebellion of Joe’s donors – and a visitation of covid before the message penetrated. Even then, he demanded that his V-P choice succeed him, so he (with his imaginary friend) remains a mover and shaker whatever the electoral outcome.

Happily, we in Australia don’t have that problem, except, perhaps, in Toowoomba. 

In fact, while our current prime minister never denies his Catholic upbringing, I watched the swearing in of himself and his ministry. And to my pleasant surprise he chose to affirm rather than swear by any god, Catholic or otherwise.

And it didn’t make a ripple… except perhaps in Toowoomba.

robert@robertmacklin.com